Media Empire Redux

Posted on by

I have an long essay about the Friday the 13th series up on the BrightLights Film Journal now. Here’s a quote:

In that vein, perhaps my favorite eye-for-an-eye moment in the whole series is one of the first; an idealistic counselor in the first movie is picked up on the road and starts nattering about how she’s always wanted to work with children. “I hate it when people call ’em ‘kids,'” she opines. Moments later she doesn’t care what they’re called because — her throat’s been slit! I guess your smarmy semantic quibbles look kind of silly now, don’t they, you vacuous little chit? Huh? Don’t they?! Maybe it’s just because I’ve worked as an educator for 15 years, but I can’t really describe how satisfying that sequence is. School reformers and earnest do-gooders of all kinds — put them to the scythe, Jason! Similarly, in part 5, when the porcine and infantilized hillbilly biker is riding his motorcycle around shrieking for his mother like a little whiny brat, and Jason finally, finally, finally chops his head off . . . I mean, who wouldn’t give the decapitator a high five — or at least cheer from a safe distance? If you’ve ever wished a parent would get their kid to just.shut.up. in a restaurant, I think you understand the impulse.

Also on the same site, a slightly longer version of my review of a book about Jack Hill.

And I have a brief, snarky review of Jeff Brown’s new book here in the Chicago Reader’s Spring Books issue.

0 thoughts on “Media Empire Redux”

  1. Well damn. That’s a much better essay than the “Friday the 13th” series deserves.

    I found your distinction between Man-boy Jason and Lawbringer Jason to be especially interesting. This is where the mask becomes so important. As long as he’s the faceless lawbringer, Jason is unstoppable. But as soon as he (or any slasher) is unmasked, he becomes vulnerable.

    So, did you watch Jason 3D with the 3D specs? The flying eyeball was a cute, but seeing a joint being passed toward the viewer was the best use of 3D in history.

  2. I really enjoyed the friday the 13th series, actually. Four is a borderline great movie; five is really good; seven is really good, and the rest are solid (of the first eight, six and eight are probably the weakest.)

    I saw them all on DVD, so no 3D, alas.

  3. I agree and disagree with you there. Four is probably the best of the series, plus it has Crispin Glover and pre-cokehead Corey Feldman. And I have a soft spot for Seven, given that it was the first horror movie I ever saw.

    I really hated Five though. I felt betrayed (BETRAYED!) when it turned out the killer was not Jason but some crazy paramedic.

  4. A lot of people felt betrayed. But…it’s like with Wonder Woman. I’m not a fan of Wonder Woman qua Wonder Woman. I’m not a fan of Jason qua Jason. I don’t care if it’s *really* Jason who does the killing. Especially when the whole point of that movie, especially, is that *anybody* can be Jason. Five is obsessed with that insight; with the way that this person, or that person, can put on the mask; that Jason is a potential. It’s very smart and insistent about that. The betrayal is even part of the point, I think; masculinity is stupid. There’s no mythic power; there’s just shitheads picking up the same stupid tropes and chopping each other up.

    Really, try watching it again. It’s a smart, well-made movie, all the more surprising in that it deliberately bucks the logic of sequels to follow its thematic preoccupations. On those grounds, it’s probably the most auteurish efforts of the series. Six, in comparison, is a debacle, capitulating to the formula for no good reason other than that people complained about 5. (Not that 6 is terrible or unwatchable…but it’s clearly inferior to the two which preceded it.)

  5. Since I was planning on getting the DVD box set, I’ll definitely give Five another watch, as it has been years since I’ve seen it. Plus I watched it back then on the USA Network, so they censored out the spectacular tits.